Space and astronomy in the Twitterverse

Twitter has been lauded as the next killer app and maligned as useless junk in equal measure. But a new service that lets you know exactly when the International Space Station (ISS) will pass over your head adds weight to the "useful" side of the scale.

The service, called Twisst, extracts your global position and time zone from the location you list in your Twitter feed, and sends you a personalised message when the ISS is coming so you know to look up. It's the most practical space-related use of Twitter we've seen yet.

It got us at New Scientist wondering: Where else can an astronomy enthusiast look for useful, fun tweets? We asked you for suggestions, rounded up your favourites, and added a few of our own. Here's our list of top tweeters, who bring personality, inside knowledge and unique perspectives to the Twitterverse.

Your favourites

@BadAstronomer
Real-World Identity: Phil Plait, astronomer and blogger
Followers: 17,400+
Following: 170
Tweets: 7100+
Phil Plait has been chronicling science and skepticism at Bad Astronomy since March 2005. Like his award-winning blog, his Twitter feed is a stockpile of weird science tidbits told in clear, chatty tones. He's willing to engage with the rest of the Twitterverse, too, and frequently re-tweets and responds to other people's comments. He's been accused of tweeting too much during breaking news events such as space launches, and the numbers uphold that: at more than 7100 tweets, he's the most prolific micro-blogger on our list.

@Astro_Mike
Real-World Identity: Mike Massimino, astronaut and first tweeter in space
Followers: 695,600+
Following: 8
Tweets: 200+
There's not a lot of exclusive stuff on the internet; most of what you can find on Twitter, you can find somewhere else. But not Astro_Mike's gemlike tweets from the space shuttle Atlantis in May. He described the view from Earth orbit with a poet's voice, full of awe, in 140 characters or less:

"From orbit: Viewing the Earth is a study of contrasts, beautiful colors of the planet, thin blue line of atmosphere, pure blackness of space".

The frequency of his tweets has tailed off since he returned home, though the quality hasn't. One post-flight favorite:

"Getting re-adjusted to gravity, let go of a small bag of groceries and must have expected it to float, luckily no damage".

Though he did host a live webcast where he took questions from Twitter, Astro_Mike doesn't use the interactive aspect of Twitter as much as he might. He rarely replies to other tweeters. Despite a 690,000-strong army of followers, he only follows 8 people, including NASA, NASA_Astronauts, fellow astronauts Mark Polansky (Astro_127) and Scott Parazynski (SPOTScott), and, oddly enough, Ellen DeGeneres.

@Astronautics
Real-World Identity: David J. Cook
Followers: 107,000+
Following: 104,000+
Tweets: 2700+Astronautics is the Twitter feed of the Space and Astronautics News, an aggregator that covers spaceflight and general astronomy stories. Twitalyzer, a Twitter statistical analysis tool, lists him in the top 1000 most influential tweeters. The human behind the tweets, David Cook, has his ear to the ground. His tweets are timely and detailed, especially about NASA missions.

@NASA
Real-World Identity: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Followers: 104,000+
Following: 47
Tweets: 4700+
An abundance of NASA missions and subdivisions now have their own Twitter feeds. NASA is like a best-of list, aggregating the highlights from its sister feeds. It's excellent for press releases, webcast alerts and pretty pictures, but light on breaking news. (Click here for a list of NASA programmes on Twitter.)

Other tweeters we like

@Astro_127
Real-World Identity: Mark Polansky, astronaut
Followers: 38,800+
Following: 2
Tweets: 330+
If you enjoyed Astro_Mike's tweets, be sure to follow Mark Polansky, Astro_127, the next astronaut to tweet from space. He's commanding the space shuttle Endeavour mission to the ISS, which launched on 11 July. José Hernández, an astronaut on the following space shuttle mission due to launch in August is also tweeting – in Spanish and English – @Astro_Jose.

@therealBuzz
Real-World Identity: Buzz Aldrin, Apollo astronaut
Followers: 170,000+
Following: 21
Tweets: 80+
One of the biggest space celebrities of all time has embraced Twitter! Although it's largely about upcoming book signings and he doesn't seem to take part in the Twitterverse conversation at all, he did tweet news of his recent rap video with Snoop Dogg. And I still get a kick out of being virtually connected to one of the first men on the moon.

@VeronicaMcG
Real-World Identity: Veronica McGregor, NASA-JPL news manager and the human behind @MarsPhoenix, @MarsRovers, and @MarsScienceLab
Followers: 1300+
Following: 163
Tweets: 1000+
NASA's Phoenix lander broke new ground on Mars and in Twitterspace as @MarsPhoenix. It was the first and best in a long line of NASA robots to adopt personalities on Twitter. It's mostly dormant now that the mission is over, but the woman who anthropomorphised it is still tweeting loudly for Spirit and Opportunity (whom she calls "Oppy") @MarsRovers, Curiosity (née Mars Science Laboratory) @MarsScienceLab, and her own feed.

@marsroverdriver
Real-World Identity: Scott Maxwell, JPL scientist who drives the rovers Spirit and Opportunity and blogs about it
Followers: 1400+
Following: 1100+
Tweets: 740+
Scott Maxwell has one of the coolest jobs in the world, and he knows it. On his Twitter profile, he describes his duties like this: "On a small red light in the night sky lives four hundred pounds of thinking metal sent from Earth. I tell that metal what to do, and it does it." His tweets have that same level of gleeful enthusiasm. He's also in a position to provide up-to-the-minute updates on the rovers' status, giving his followers an insider's view. He's been detailing the process of getting the Spirit rover out of a Martian sandpit under the hashtag #FreeSpirit.

Honourable mentions

@SpaceCenterHou
Real-World Identity: Space Center Houston, the Johnson Space Center's visitor centre
In addition to updates on spacecraft launches and general NASA news, the Twitter feed of the Johnson Space Center's visitors' centre offers a picture of the day, trivia, updates on events, and funny videos. A relative newcomer to Twitter (first tweet was in January), its updates are infrequent but entertaining.

@moonrangerlaura
Real-World Identity: Laura Burns, astronomer who worked on James Webb Space Telescope and now works on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission.

@LeighFletcher
Real-World Identity: Leigh Fletcher, post-doc at JPL working on the Cassini mission to Saturn. He recently broke the news of an impact on Jupiter on his Twitter feed, and is still providing updates.

I'd like to mention the recently formed Space Tweep Society, a group of space enthusiasts on Twitter from a variety of backgrounds. Several of the space tweeps listed in the article have already signed up. You can see the rest at
http://spacetweepsociety.com/about/tweeps/

Maybe I'm just partial to radio astronomy... but jodrellbank is a great one to follow. They also have a podcast!

By North American Skies
on July 25, 2009 4:55 PM

Great stuff this! I also do a Twitter website with updates on sky events that people can view w/o equipment (NASkies). I would love to hear from anyone who is doing something similar and especially anyone who is providing a similar service for other types of observable, natural history events -- such as bird, insect and animal migrations and/or unusual behavior; ongoing geologic phenomena; observable climatic changes and so on. Events or series of events lasting at least several days are bet, but more ephemeral events are of interest, too, such as auroral displays and unusual cloud or atmospheric patterns. If you have something that might apply, please email me:
Larry Sessions

A new group of Space Twitter users has formed, including some of the great Twitters listed here in this post, to blog and share their thoughts "When 140 characters isn't enough" The Space Tweep society is open to anyone on Twitter with a love of Space Science and Exploration. We keep a list of Space loving Twitter users and our resource includes many contacts from inside the space agencies and observatories. Please visit us at http://SpaceTweepSociety.org/ and sign up with your Twitter name for access. This is a non-commercial, just-for-fun and friendship, group.

Wanted to just throw my own Twitter feed out there. I'm a writer and editor at Seed magazine, and cover a lot of exoplanetary stuff, the occasional NASA mission, some random odds and ends. Check me out and follow if you like!

http://www.twitter.com/LeeBillings

David Cook
on August 6, 2009 12:27 AM

@astronautics is not exactly what the title suggest - more like a call for help

Phil
on August 16, 2009 3:18 PM

Lisa,

Astronautics recently changed his alias for at least the second time.
Under his new name most of his posts are still completely unrelated to space exploration. You can check by yourself.

There are many good sources of info about space on Twitter and most come from people at NASA and from various organizations, posting original content and not asking for donations for content reproduced from other sources. I am happy you mentioned some of the best ones but clearly ex-astronautics is not one of them.

Finally, there is currently a petition organised and signed by many space tweeps, to have it's owner removed from twitter.

Jesus Beteta
on August 18, 2009 11:28 PM

I have just read two articles, one was published on MSNBC in 2005:NASA sets schedule for handling asteroid threat - Letter suggests probe in 2019 and deflector by 2028 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9871982) and the other one is a NASA report shown in 2008 (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/niaa2008.html )
Why don’t governments start a huge worldwide project to preserve humankind? This may sound insane for many people but it is more insane to keep on waiting until an asteroid causes our extinction. The worst scenario is a massive asteroid hitting our planet causing enormous tsunamis to wipe out entire cities, dust would block the atmosphere, preventing the earth from getting any sun. Plant life would become extinct, and a nuclear winter would begin .Maybe a deadly impact is unlikely to happen soon but we cannot put at risk our existence in the hope that a megadisaster will never happen or just rely on strategies that could ease a killer asteroid off its collision course This is no joke. We have to build underground cities (nuclear powered - artificial light to keep plants growing to provide food and oxygen, etc.). A HUMAN PRESERVATION PROJECT must be initiated.

A new group of Space Twitter users has formed, including some of the great Twitters listed here in this post, to blog and share their thoughts "When 140 characters isn't enough" The Space Tweep society is open to anyone on Twitter with a love of Space Science and Exploration. We keep a list of Space loving Twitter users and our resource includes many contacts from inside the space agencies and observatories. Please visit us at http://SpaceTweepSociety.org/ and sign up with your Twitter name for access. This is a non-commercial, just-for-fun and friendship, group.